Boom And Bust Guide To Exam Questions

BOOM AND BUST: ECONOMY AND SOCIETY IN THE USA

1917-1933

UNIT 1: Boom: the impact of the First World War, Henry Ford and mass production, consumerism

• Content: • Reasons for the apparent prosperity of the boom years

in the USA. • The impact Henry Ford had on the automobile industry

and on the USA economy in general, • New business methods consequent upon the growth of

huge corporations and mass consumerism and easy credit.

• Government policies which helped create and perpetuate this boom, in particular the Emergency Tariff Act of 1921 and the Fordney-McCumber Act of 1922.

• Tax reductions and Coolidge’s general policy of laissez-faire

UNIT 2 Prohibition and organised crime

• Content:• The reasons why Prohibition was introduced into the USA, and

the Anti-Saloon League, anti-German feeling and support given by business tycoons like John D. Rockefeller.

• The work of John F Kramer, the first Prohibition Commissioner and the difficulties he and his agents faced.

• The encouragement prohibition gave to mass law-breaking via speakeasies, moonshine and bootlegging and the links to gangs, gangsters and organised crime, along with knowledge of the activities of John Torrio and Al Capone in Chicago, the St Valentine’s Day Massacre,.

• Corruption within the forces of law and order and the apparent inability of the authorities to control or contain the situation, is expected.

• The positive attributes of Prohibition.

UNIT 3: Political and social tensions: the Ku

Klux Klan, immigration policy, the Red Scare Content:•Political and social tensions (the Ku Klux Klan, immigration policy, the Red Scare) relating to conflicts arising out of the reactions of white Anglo-Saxon Protestant US citizens to social change, to the women’s suffrage issue and to racial tensions. •The reasons for the Red Scare and how it developed in the USA via, for example, the Palmer Raids. •Why Congress passed the Emergency Immigration Law in 1921 and the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act in 1924, and to the tensions these laws both reduced and exacerbated. •How the Sacco and Vanzetti case reflected racial tensions. •The ways in which the Ku Klux Klan reflected widespread racism in the USA, the reasons for the Klan’s collapse as a mass organisation in the late 1920s. •How the Scopes trial reflected the tensions between rural, small town USA and the big cities.

UNIT 4 Bust: the economic and social causes, and the social and political consequences to 1933, of the Wall

Street Crash.• Content:• The economic and social causes, and the social and

political consequences to 1933, of the Wall Street Crash.• Identifying that the seeds of the Crash lay in the

instability of the boom years of the early and mid-twenties, in particular in the uneven distribution of income, rural poverty and stock market speculation.

• The immediate causes of the Crash and why the Crash led to the Depression.

• The policies of Hoover and the effect his policies had on relieving the worst effects of the Depression.

a. Comprehension and inference

• Only from the source• Not a stimulus to write what you know

about the source (i.e DON’T need own knowledge)

• SUPPORT the inferences made by reference to specific phrases, words or ideas in the source

• NEVER write out the source

• Examiner’s Specific Advice • Question A focuses on the basic skills required in

handling any sources – comprehension and interpretation.  This means that you have to read a source and make sure that you understand what it is saying (comprehension) and also look beyond what it says to consider what is suggested or implied, so that you can draw inferences.  Sources provide evidence, not packaged information, and historians interpret the different pieces of evidence in it in order to work out what it shows.  In answering any source-based question, you need to draw out similar inferences about the issues picked out in the question.  Therefore, start by being clear in your own mind what issues your question is focused on!  You must also make sure that you support your answer with examples from the source, linked to your inferences.

• Notice that this question is only worth 6 marks, so don’t spend too long on it.

b. Use of own knowledge to present brief explanation of key issue, concept, event or

individual

• FOCUS on the question

• AVOID writing in a general way about the topic

• INCLUDE specific detail, including, as appropriate, names and dates

• Examiner’s Specific Advice • Question B requires you to use your own

knowledge, not the sources.  This does not mean that you may not mention something that is referred to in the sources, but to gain credit for it, you must take your point beyond the information supplied by the source.  These questions often look like mini-essays, but you should bear in mind that they are worth only 10 marks (as compared with 24 marks for question E).  Therefore you should look to spend a little less than half the time, and to write no more than half as much, as you would for question E. However, as with any piece of extended writing, you should take a few minutes to plan it before you start to write.

c. Cross referencing

• Agreement with, or challenge to, a view, or an attitude• Accurate comprehension and analysis of both sources• Responses should go beyond simple matching of

surface features• Consideration, as appropriate, inferences that can be

made from the sources, and perhaps the nature of the sources that are lending support or offering challenge, or indicating attitude or situation

• Attention should be paid quite explicitly to ‘how far’ there is support or challenge

• Examiner’s Specific Advice • The target for this question is your ability to evaluate

the usefulness of sources – to decide how much evidence a source provides, and what weight the evidence will bear.  This means that you must both look at the evidence a source supplies, to interpret what it tells you, and consider how, when and by whom the source was produced in order to decide how much weight can be placed on it. You need to consider the provenance of the source (where it comes from) and also its nature (what kind of source it is) because this affects the type of information you get from it.  The usefulness, or value, of a source depends on a number of things, but most of all on the enquiry for which you are using it – sources may be very useful for one part of a situation, and much less so for another, and they may be reliable for one purpose, and less so for another.  Most sources are written from a point of view, and you can often identify it. 

• Equally significant are issues such as how far it is typical, whether the author would have a broad picture of what was happening, whether the source was intended for a particular purpose or audience.  The key point for this kind of question is that not only must you analyse and interpret the evidence within the source, you must also consider the origin and nature of the source to decide on the usefulness of the evidence within it for your particular enquiry.

• Although this is not a cross-referencing question as such, the fact that you are asked about two sources allows you to use them together in order to consider their usefulness.  Take this into account when you plan your answer, and try to use the sources together, not one after the other.

d. Utility of source for a specific enquiry

• Relate utility to the specific enquiry given in the question

• Think beyond the surface features of the sources

• Provenance: take note of captions, of the nature of the source, its origins and purpose

• Balance the response, not only between the sources but limitations and value

• The reach a reasoned judgement about utility

• Examiner’s Specific Advice • Questions C and D require you to use more than

one source, in order to cross-reference to make a judgement, or to decide how useful the evidence is.  Cross-referencing questions like the one below are recognisable because they tend to ask ‘how far’ sources agree.  This means that there will be some agreement and some disagreement, and good answers will consider both.  You need to look for points of agreement and disagreement, but this does not mean simply matching statements.  You need to interpret the evidence before you can say whether the sources agree, and it is worth remembering that evidence can sometimes be interpreted in different ways. 

• In addition, you need to use the two sources together, not treat them separately.  The easiest way to organise this is to analyse each source (break them down into separate points) and then consider which points show agreement, disagreement, or simply just difference. 

• You need to read, analyse, interpret, compare the evidence and then make your judgement – and you need to do this before you start to write your answer, so that you can plan it properly. 

• In coming to a judgement about ‘how far’ you also need to take into account how much weight can be placed on the evidence of support or challenge, by taking into account its nature and purpose – who provided it and for what.

e. Use of two sources and own knowledge to agree/disagree with a

presented view or interpretation• Good answers will….• Focus on the stated factor in the question• Present an argument for and against the stated factor• Use both required sources and own knowledge to

support and develop an argument• Be considered and controlled due to thoughtful planning• Reach a reasoned, supported and balanced judgement.

This judgement should contain both precise knowledge and appropriately selected evidence from the two sources .

• N.b 50% of the mark will be awarded for evidence of use of the 2 sources…50% for own knowledge

• Examiner’s Specific Advice• Although the phrase ‘do you agree’ might seem to suggest that you

can answer ‘yes because….’ or ‘no because…’, the best answers to question E are those that look at both sides and treat the question as ‘how far do you agree?’.  You therefore need to approach it by putting together all your points in support of the claim, then by putting those arguments that oppose it, and finally by offering a balanced conclusion. 

• The second thing that you have to remember is that your arguments must be supported by evidence drawn from the sources specified in the question, and information from your wider knowledge.  If you forget one or other of these, your maximum mark will be reduced to 12.  The best way to be sure of using both is to link them together – therefore you must include this in your planning – and you must plan any essay that you do.

• Start by reading through the sources, and make a list of points for and against the claim. You could usefully present this material in a table. Then add information that you can recall to support each point further. Just a word in your plan will help to remind you.  You can also use recalled knowledge to challenge points and move your argument on.  You can then start to write. Make sure that you refer directly to your sources when writing (state which one points come from). This is especially important if you are drawing out inferences from your sources.